AtG Howling Crag (5e PBP) OOC

[Kobold Stew]

(will post later tonight or tomorrow; sorry.)

 

[Steve Gorak]

I’ll post tomorrow, sorry guys.
Been busy, but I have a meeting I can just half listen to, perfect for pbp.
Cheers,

Sg

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

My only comment is the Orders - the advantage to a save ability. That is one of only two benefits of the meditation room and that’s a level 13 facility.

Yes, but the meditation room just lets you get that ability at-will (with the seven days of course).

The Orders means that Doc is under a compulsion to do something- not just the usual, but a specific directive of the Sheriff. And in my understanding, the Sheriff's specific wants are not something that's going to be pleasant.

(FWIW, unless @FitzTheRuke signals an RP reason to trigger that, I'm not going to use it. That benefit would not be worth the party harmony issues that it would cause. I added it as a flavor to the chapel, but it's only there in case Fitz comes up with some bad ideas to inflict on me us. )

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

Also also, the more I have been combing through the bastion facilities and the way they work, the more I think that this is a good idea, but truly half-baked in execution (and I am being generous).

Some issues-

1. The level-gating occurs both for facilities and within facilities (so some facilities are gated by level, but then other facilities have commands gated by level).
2. The nature of the facility and the level you can get it make no sense. The canonical example is the pub (13th level, really???) but it's really all of them; the problem is that they are trying to gate the benefits gained, not the nature of the facility. Why is a pub brewing magic beverages, anyway?
3. The benefits of different facilities in terms of play are wildly disparate. Let's be honest- if you were choosing facilities for optimizing, why would you ever pick a gambling hall (one order, variable return of money) as your ninth level facility? IME, by ninth level most 5e players have so much money they are using gold pieces as beer coasters and gems to decorate their cocktails. I picked it because ... OF COURSE DOC WOULD! But it wouldn't be a good choice for most. Or imagine waiting until 17th level to build a guildhall, and you choose brewers or bakers, so you can get 500gp of beer or fancy cake every week?
4. The event economy for bastions doesn't make sense? My reading of the event table is that there are only two events that use bastion defenders (Request for Aid and Attack) and only one hurts the bastion (Attack). But attack can't make the bastion fall, it can only cause one special facility to shut down for one turn and then become operational again at no cost? And there is only a 5% chance of that each bastion turn. So Armory and Barrack are flavorful but as written almost never useful- even if you didn't have either, that would just mean that every turn, there would be a 5% chance of having one of the other facilities knocked out for a bastion turn.

And so on. I really love the kernel of this idea, but the more I was playing with it, the more it looked like this was the sketch of the idea, and it might be developed in some future supplement(s).

 

[TaranTheWanderer]

Yes, but the meditation room just lets you get that ability at-will (with the seven days of course).

The Orders means that Doc is under a compulsion to do something- not just the usual, but a specific directive of the Sheriff. And in my understanding, the Sheriff's specific wants are not something that's going to be pleasant.

(FWIW, unless @FitzTheRuke signals an RP reason to trigger that, I'm not going to use it. That benefit would not be worth the party harmony issues that it would cause. I added it as a flavor to the chapel, but it's only there in case Fitz comes up with some bad ideas to inflict on me us. )

Oh that’s cool actually. It reminds me of a power in a FATE game where a Holy warrior can pray for guidance and, as long as they are pursuing the mission they prayed for, they earn a numerical bonus on all checks that push that mission forward. But it also compels them to follow through even if circumstances would distract them from their mission. They lose the benefit if they pay off the compel and quit the mission.

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

Oh that’s cool actually. It reminds me of a power in a FATE game where a Holy warrior can pray for guidance and, as long as they are pursuing the mission they prayed for, they earn a numerical bonus on all checks that push that mission forward. But it also compels them to follow through even if circumstances would distract them from their mission. They lose the benefit if they pay off the compel and quit the mission.

Yep! I forgot to add the other condition, which is that the Chapel cannot do any other commands until the Sheriff's Order is completed.

But I don't think Doc has the luxury of quitting that type of mission. The consequences would be a lot more dire than losing some saving throw benefits. Anyway, hopefully Fitz isn't evil enough to think of any uses for that. Right?


....right?

 

[TaranTheWanderer]

Also also, the more I have been combing through the bastion facilities and the way they work, the more I think that this is a good idea, but truly half-baked in execution (and I am being generous).

Some issues-

1. The level-gating occurs both for facilities and within facilities (so some facilities are gated by level, but then other facilities have commands gated by level).
2. The nature of the facility and the level you can get it make no sense. The canonical example is the pub (13th level, really???) but it's really all of them; the problem is that they are trying to gate the benefits gained, not the nature of the facility. Why is a pub brewing magic beverages, anyway?
3. The benefits of different facilities in terms of play are wildly disparate. Let's be honest- if you were choosing facilities for optimizing, why would you ever pick a gambling hall (one order, variable return of money) as your ninth level facility? IME, by ninth level most 5e players have so much money they are using gold pieces as beer coasters and gems to decorate their cocktails. I picked it because ... OF COURSE DOC WOULD! But it wouldn't be a good choice for most. Or imagine waiting until 17th level to build a guildhall, and you choose brewers or bakers, so you can get 500gp of beer or fancy cake every week?
4. The event economy for bastions doesn't make sense? My reading of the event table is that there are only two events that use bastion defenders (Request for Aid and Attack) and only one hurts the bastion (Attack). But attack can't make the bastion fall, it can only cause one special facility to shut down for one turn and then become operational again at no cost? And there is only a 5% chance of that each bastion turn. So Armory and Barrack are flavorful but as written almost never useful- even if you didn't have either, that would just mean that every turn, there would be a 5% chance of having one of the other facilities knocked out for a bastion turn.

And so on. I really love the kernel of this idea, but the more I was playing with it, the more it looked like this was the sketch of the idea, and it might be developed in some future supplement(s).

Yeah, I find it a bit uh, what’s the word, gamest? Like, it’s used to make magic items and get combat bonuses. The trading facilities are used to pay for those things.

The theatre is kind of stupid. Do a week’s long performance to add bonuses to die rolls for the rest of the week….what? It really should be used for garnering attention of rich folk, gathering info and gathering followers etc… it’s like they threw it in there to give the bard something to do.

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

Yeah, I find it a bit uh, what’s the word, gamest? Like, it’s used to make magic items and get combat bonuses. The trading facilities are used to pay for those things.

The theatre is kind of stupid. Do a week’s long performance to add bonuses to die rolls for the rest of the week….what? It really should be used for garnering attention of rich folk, gathering info and gathering followers etc… it’s like they threw it in there to give the bard something to do.

I think you hit the nail on the head. I don't mind that it's gamist in some ways- we are playing a game. But it's that they mixed gamist stuff with the lore in absurd ways! Again, I will use the pub. Because they had to put that absurd gamist benefit, they gated it at 13th level- even though that exactly the type of facility you might want or get at 5th!!!!

I think that they really struggled reconciling the game aspects and the lore aspects, and ended up making some poor choices. But even with that, the bastion turns still don't make sense. I have trouble believing that they seriously tested it given that I can see by looking at it that it had issues (barrack, armory). In other words, your bastion can't fall because someone attacks it, but by ... failing to issue orders.

Also also, there is a weird issue with the way that orders are given. It says that if you aren't there, the bastion does the maintain order as a whole. BUT if you use the sending spell (or similar) you can send orders to the hirelings when you are away.

Bastion events (like attack) only happen when the bastion is in maintain. Technically, if you have sending (or similar spell) you can continue issuing commands and the bastion is never in maintain and there is never a bastion event.

"On a Bastion turn, a character in their Bastion can issue special orders—called Bastion orders—to one or more of their Bastion's special facilities. A character needn't issue orders to all the special facilities in their Bastion on a given Bastion turn. The Maintain order is unusual; it is issued to the whole Bastion rather than to one or more special facilities. If a character isn't in their Bastion on a given Bastion turn, the Bastion acts as though it were issued the Maintain order on that turn unless the owner can communicate with the Bastion hirelings using the Sending spell or similar magic." DMG 336


@FitzTheRuke I was going to grab sending to issue orders while we are away because of the whole "neglect" thing, but I'm not sure about this apparent issue- how would you like to handle it?

 

[FitzTheRuke]

I'm not entirely sure. When they playtested the Bastions, I was super-excited to see it, but I grew disinterested as I read, to the point that I didn't even finish reading the playtest version, far or less ever playtest it. When the book came, I didn't feel like they'd done enough to improve it to the point that I'd like it, but I felt that I should probably give it a proper try. But it's weak - very weak - like an even messier, half-baked version of downtime that had, as you describe above, very strange level-gates. Gating the features makes sense for balance, but gating the locations is just dumb.

They're really very terrible. I should take the time to have a new look (I haven't read it since it came out fresh) at Level-Up's Strongholds (a similar idea) and see how I might like to combine them.

But for our purposes right now, let's make sure we do two things: 1) Don't be even remotely stuck on what the current Bastion Rules want to call anything - rework it into something that serves our purpose; 2) Don't be too stuck on the specifics of the rules mechanics, either - they're not so "good" or "balanced" that we should trust them over anything that we come up with.

If you have a better idea, as @Snarf Zagyg has done above, feel free to rework your stuff. If you'd like it reworked, but don't want to "do the work" (or you're not confident that you'd do a good job of it) feel free to share the basics of your idea, and we'll workshop it here a little.

And ULTIMATELY: The Bastion-part was an attempt at a fun little mini-game while we got restarted. We can leave it behind us and head to the "meat" of the adventure. And f this is all just too much work, we could drop it entirely and use our judgement on what having the castle and NPC "friends" means to our adventure, without any pesky "rules" for it.

 

[TaranTheWanderer]

I think you hit the nail on the head. I don't mind that it's gamist in some ways- we are playing a game. But it's that they mixed gamist stuff with the lore in absurd ways! Again, I will use the pub. Because they had to put that absurd gamist benefit, they gated it at 13th level- even though that exactly the type of facility you might want or get at 5th!!!!

I think that they really struggled reconciling the game aspects and the lore aspects, and ended up making some poor choices. But even with that, the bastion turns still don't make sense. I have trouble believing that they seriously tested it given that I can see by looking at it that it had issues (barrack, armory). In other words, your bastion can't fall because someone attacks it, but by ... failing to issue orders.

Also also, there is a weird issue with the way that orders are given. It says that if you aren't there, the bastion does the maintain order as a whole. BUT if you use the sending spell (or similar) you can send orders to the hirelings when you are away.

Bastion events (like attack) only happen when the bastion is in maintain. Technically, if you have sending (or similar spell) you can continue issuing commands and the bastion is never in maintain and there is never a bastion event.

"On a Bastion turn, a character in their Bastion can issue special orders—called Bastion orders—to one or more of their Bastion's special facilities. A character needn't issue orders to all the special facilities in their Bastion on a given Bastion turn. The Maintain order is unusual; it is issued to the whole Bastion rather than to one or more special facilities. If a character isn't in their Bastion on a given Bastion turn, the Bastion acts as though it were issued the Maintain order on that turn unless the owner can communicate with the Bastion hirelings using the Sending spell or similar magic." DMG 336


@FitzTheRuke I was going to grab sending to issue orders while we are away because of the whole "neglect" thing, but I'm not sure about this apparent issue- how would you like to handle it?

Yeah. You’ll almost never get attacked. I feel like there should be campaign reasons it gets attacked so their should have been rules to connect your campaign to the bastion.

What I really wanted was a means to reflect that Donnell has his clan gang and they reside at the bastion but go out to talk to the locals and scout the wilderness and bring back info. There is nothing like that. The closest thing is the pub or the library. Which I might grab the library if you are dropping it but it sounds a lot like what your pub is already doing.